Tree huggers

Earth Day found Carter and I doing a special kind of "tree" project. A pretty scaled down version of a family tree assignment -- but nonetheless, a family tree assignment! This is what Jim and I have been waiting for!

Yes, we are self-proclaimed genealogy geeks. We have been waiting for the day when Carter would come home from school and say "I need my family tree!" Hurray for us.

As far as our efforts go, Jim has been working on his branch since high school and I just started about 6 or 7 years ago. Thanks to the Internet, I quickly caught up. However, his advantage was that he was "into" it while he still had grandparents and elder relatives to talk to. I started my research after my grandparents had passed and relied on my parents quite a bit for names and information.

I have found that for the most part, though, I am actually the one telling them about people they are related to, including names of their grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. As Jim and I have both learned, our ancestors were too busy working their farms or trying to survive in general to sit around and talk about their family tree -- with the exception of Bible records, of course.

We had never printed out Carter's tree before. It ended up taking 18 pages to print (practically a tree -- not good on Earth Day). I had to get out my handy paper trimmer and tape the pages together so it looked like a bracket he could understand. It was 3 pages (8 1/2 x 11) across and 6 pages down. What a sight to see!

Carter was impressed that on Daddy's side he could go back 11 generations. "Mom, do I have to write great-great-great 10 times or can I just say my great (10) grandparents are so and so?" I let him off the hook - even though he could use the cursive practice.

On my side, he could go back "7 greats." I thought that was pretty good. Of course, Daddy trumped me. He is a "Mayflower descendant," which means Carter is too. I had to remind him what the Mayflower was, but I think he thinks that's cool.

I also reminded him that my branch wasn't done yet. Maybe there is someone famous 8 or 9 generations back that I have yet to discover. I'm sure they can't be as famous as Robyn Austin the blogger, but I'd be happy to include them!